The Software Behind the Mars Phoenix Lander

chromatic writes "Imagine managing a million lines of code to send over seven hundred pounds of equipment millions of miles through space to land safely on Mars and perform dozens of experiments. You have C, 128 MB of RAM, and very few opportunities to retry if you get it wrong. O'Reilly News interviewed Peter Gluck, project software engineer for NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander, about the process of writing software and managing these constraints — and why you're unlikely to see the source code to the project any time soon."

Comments

Re:128MB?

[Anonymous Coward]

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Nope, its written in C.

[deft]

But you didnt read the article, you were more just hoping for a slashdot linux rally cry or something, werent you.

But if someone crys in a dark basement creepily lit by a monitor, does anyone here it?

Damn, i guess I did.

Re:Nope, its written in C.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats OK...Too much Wine crashes my Linux too

How hard can it be?

[Dex5791]

Just open the existing code base for the previous lander and cut&paste.

Canadians!

[vimm]

FTFA

We have a team of Canadians... we had to be very careful about our relationship with them... how much we could disclose to them

In soviet canada, mars probe software discloses you?

Re:Your statement is flawed.

[mystik]

Well. They really can make the software as complex + bug ridden as they want.

They only have to make sure that the code that runs the robot that presses the reset button is bug free :)

Re:Great software!

[Durindana]

you mean...

Answers to these questions and more, rendered inaccessible by /.

Re:128MB?

[Anonymous Coward]

Micro$soft?

Good job.

Re:Um, right

[Anonymous Coward]

So how much of that 128MB does the VBRUN60.DLL take?

The same amount it takes on Earth.

You know

[geekoid]

if they wrote it in perl, it would only be 1 line.

Re:You know

[MadnessASAP]

Yes, but it would use the unholy letters of the dark lord himself, and bring death and destruction upon any man who gazed upon its ghastly source.

Re:You know

[dkf]

Yes, but it would use the unholy letters of the dark lord himself, and bring death and destruction upon any man who gazed upon its ghastly source.

Ah! I see you know APL...

hello.c

[xx_chris]

#include void main() { printf("Hello Mars\n"); }

So Peter?

[codepunk]

You're the project software engineer. I noticed that was singular. Is there just one product software engineer? Like sort of the managing engineer for the project?

Yeah. Project Software Systems Engineer is the title. And our software was developed -- the flight system software was developed in three different locations. Lockheed Martin developed the spacecraft software, and then we had payload software developed by both the University of Arizona and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

So Peter what is it that you do here?

I hand specifications to engineers that write the flight software.

So you take the papers to them?

Well no my secretary does that...

Re:128MB?

[ron sepun]

Micro$soft?

Good job.

Help me spell Microdollarsignoft == Micro$oft... Fail is you.

Re:Not like the olden days

[Tablizer]

I'm building a PDP-11 for a nuclear reactor.

Divide by zero and run like hell!